


Night Swimmers

by ipsilateral



Series: the rest is noise [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2020-08-11 03:23:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20146801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ipsilateral/pseuds/ipsilateral
Summary: A few hours later, a nondescript blue sign announces that they're entering Illinois. Will drives by it in about half a second, but it's like he's passed through an invisible gate that he thought he'd never make it to. He grips the steering wheel, half-bracing for the car to be bounced back by some magical force.You cannot pass.-- a road trip fic





	1. Chicago

Of course, he and Mike drifted apart after the move. All of them did, that much was inevitable. It was happening even before Will left. Turns out that without the looming threat of shadow-monsters and demogorgons, they were just kids who were growing up and apart. 

There were phone calls and brief summer trips, but those could only cover so much ground. Cerebro got busted up around the winter of '87, when a storm blew it halfway across the city and part of the antenna jammed itself into Molly Ratliff's windshield. None of the original Party were even using the channels at that point anyway, but it still felt significant somehow. The mere possibility of communication had been soothing in and of itself. Will hadn't realized that until it was gone. 

Junior year rolled around and Will spoke on the phone with each of them maybe once a month, listening to Dustin talk about his Science Scholars program, sagely giving relationship advice to Lucas and Max, even though he had no experience of his own. He talked to El, too, whenever she was with her mom and Aunt Becky.

But with Mike, there were mostly letters. Will spent an average of two weeks writing each of his, painstakingly recounting daily events and collecting them onto binder paper. Some of the envelopes required extra stamps due to the weight. Every time he mailed one, he tried not to expect a reply. Distance had done a pretty good job of fraying their friendship and he kept practicing for the moment when Mike would cut the last thread and leave him behind permanently.

Then one day in August, Will got a letter with Mike's list of colleges to apply to, and it was almost an exact replica of the one Will had sent him a week ago. 

"Why? You would hate the west coast," Will said over the phone later. He could practically hear Mike shrug. 

"Won't know unless I try it," was all Mike said, and Will was too selfish and too much of a coward to press further, buoyed at the fact that Mike was still here, he was still Will's after all this time. "And those are all really good schools. California has great schools, I just didn't see that at first."

The thought of crossing over into the next chapter of his life with Mike by his side was equally elating and terrible. Because for reasons Will couldn't figure, Mike had spent his whole life acting like he owed Will something -- some unknowable, insurmountable vast debt that had no identifiable root cause. The easiest answer would be to say it was because Will was the one who disappeared that night and not anyone else, but Mike acted this way even before that, since they were children. 

If Will were a better person, he would have sat Mike down a long time ago and told him to stop. Told him that he doesn't owe Will anything at all, ever. Told him that he's okay to go live his own life. 

Except Will's not that person. And he never did have that talk.

* * *

The route is easy enough: head up the 65, then take highway 80 for about a billion miles. Or so Mike says. Will has a feeling he's leaving a lot out. 

As always, the anticipation before a big event has been much more nerve-racking than the event itself. Ever since Mike proposed this road trip a couple months ago, Will went through more than a few sleepless nights, worrying about everything from the mundane to the supernatural. The actual act of leaving is much more simple, despite the fact that Lucas and Dustin hadn't left until about three in the morning the night before and Will is definitely hungover: he backs the car out of the driveway, they wave to Mrs. Wheeler one last time, and that's it. They're on the road by 10:15. 

"I feel like this should seem more momentous," Will says, signaling left toward the main road like he's done a thousand times before. "Going to college is a crucial milestone in our lives. But all I can concentrate on is how my head is going to explode."

"Urgh," is all Mike grunts. He puts his sunglasses on. "I might puke with my head out the window, is that momentous enough?"

"Probably not, since you've already done that before." 

Mike makes a noise. "How do you know that story?"

"Max told me," Will says. Apparently, Mike had puked on the corner three blocks away from the Wheeler residence after some party last year -- just opened Dustin's car door and let loose while the car was still moving. It's hard for Will not to automatically insert himself into these stories as if he were there. In his mind, _he_ was sitting in the middle seat, not Max; he was the one grabbing the collar of Mike's t-shirt so he wouldn't tumble out of the car. 

When he steers them onto the highway, the 360-loop has them both groaning. Will swallows down bile, says, "Good thing there's only two-thousand more miles to go," but at least the roads are more straightforward from here on out.

Mike immediately slouches back at an angle, Converses hanging out the open window and blocking the sideview mirror. It makes Will nervous. Honestly, most things do anyway, so that's nothing new. Sometimes he feels guilty about being so timid and wary about everything. Other times, he thinks, _screw it_. Being kidnapped and then possessed by a fucking shadow dimensional monster during his formative years earned him the right to be this neurotic.

A few hours later, a nondescript blue sign announces that they're entering Illinois. Will drives by it in about half a second, but it's like he's passed through an invisible gate that he thought he'd never make it to. He grips the steering wheel, half-bracing for the car to be bounced back by some magical force. _You cannot pass_. 

"Mike," Will says, just as a test. 

When he glances over, Mike's face is inscrutable, still covered by sunglasses. He may well be sleeping, for all his promises of staying awake and being the best passenger/navigator in history. 

He can feel his heart beating fast. He repeats, "Mike." 

"Huh?" Mike turns his face slightly, then tilts his sunglasses up and squints at him with red-rimmed eyes. "What's going on? Do you want me to drive?" 

"No, I'm fine." He glances in the rearview. "Just -- we're not in Indiana anymore."

"Yeah?" Mike asks with polite interest, looking out the window as if the scenery would suddenly change. He folds his legs inside the car and straightens up, seemingly in better condition than when they'd left. "Well, good. Smell you later, Indiana."

Will regrips the steering wheel, leaning forward a bit. He pictures himself shedding his skin like a snake. They're gone. They made it. Left their childhood behind, escaped from the maw of hell.

"Fuck off, Indiana," Will says. Mike looks at him in surprise, then grins and repeats it louder out the window: "Yeah, fuck off, Indiana!"

Will laughs. They turn up the radio and he presses a little harder on the gas pedal.

* * *

Mike starts pointing out cheap motels when they're still twenty miles away from Chicago. Will vetoes all of them in turn. 

"Okay, what was wrong with that one?" Mike asks exasperatedly, craning his neck to mourn the lost opportunity to stay at what looks like a dilapidated barn. 

"Are you serious?" Will checks the mirrors. Definitely haunted. "Mike. You probably would've woken up with a kidney missing."

"You only need one," Mike huffs.

"Yeah, and then when that one fails when you're 50?" 

"Why would my kidney fail? I'm super healthy." Meanwhile, there's a growing pile of blue plastic in the footwell. Mike's been obsessed with Doritos Cool Ranch since it hit the shelves. 

Will shakes his head but he's smiling anyway. They end up driving straight into the city and getting a room at a motel right off the Magnificent Mile that is probably less haunted but maybe only just. A middle-aged woman is manning the front desk behind a thick slab of plexiglass. She checks them in as if they belong there, even as Will is half-expecting her to ask him where his mother is. 

A sixth floor room sounds promising but they discover that the windows only look out onto the gravel roof of an adjacent building. It's not a glamorous room or anything, on par with what Will has seen during family vacations, but it's got a TV and it's got Mike. 

"Beautiful vista point," Will announces. He bounces onto the bed closest to the window and watches Mike hang up his leather jacket, the centerpiece of the whole Ramones look he's been cultivating. High school has been good for Mike; he hit the six-feet mark about a month ago and his face got sharper, more angular. It's easy to see him as a nerdy, gangly rockstar in another life.

"Hungry?" Mike asks, poking through a stack of take-out menus on the side table.

"We can get something to eat in a minute," Will says. And he thinks he means it, but instead he falls asleep almost before he even realizes what's happening.

When he blinks awake, it's dusk and the sun is a raw golden orange. Two cheap pillows are gassed out under his lumbar spine. The bathroom door is hanging open and only the sharp points of Mike are visible as he stands at the sink. Elbows, ankles, shoulders. 

Waking up at this time of day always feels viscous, like swimming through honey. Will can't help but doze off again, and then he jerks awake, only to repeat the cycle a few seconds later, and again, and again. Each time his eyes blink open, it's to stuttering frames of Mike: Mike emerging from the bathroom with damp hair -- peering into the mini-fridge -- standing in front of the window with his hands on his hips.

The last time Will comes to, it's completely dark outside and he's abruptly, impossibly wide awake. Disoriented, but awake.

On his right, the window is slid open as far as it'll allow. On his left, Mike is stretched almost diagonally across his bed, toes poking over the edge of the mattress. He's reading one of the battered travel magazines that were spread out on the dresser, lit only by the blue-white glow of silent infomercials on the TV. Will watches him with this weird fondness that's almost overwhelming in how suddenly it blooms -- but guilt soon chases it away, the same guilt that's been creeping inside for months, coming up through his throat like a phantom vine. 

He closes his eyes to steady himself, tries to concentrate on his own breathing. Sleeping past a sunset always messes him up.

"So apparently, I was tired," he finally croaks. His voice tends to drag low post-nap, catching on syllables like Velcro over cotton. 

Mike looks up quickly. "He lives!"

"Barely," Will sighs. 

He's about to apologize for ruining dinner plans but then Mike says, "I got some pizza," pointing to the box by the TV. "Or do you still not really eat after naps?"

Will rubs his eyes to distract himself from the zip of pleasure that comes from Mike still knowing little details about him. "Yeah, no. I'll just wait until breakfast tomorrow. I guess I should brush my teeth?"

"If that's what you want to do, college boy."

"My mom would probably psychically know if I didn't," Will groans. Getting out of bed feels impossible. Mike ends up grabbing his hand and tugging him out as they stumble toward the bathroom together. Will doesn't let go until he has to, in order to get his toothbrush and toothpaste. 

"I told you, you only need a pea-sized amount," Mike says, grabbing at the tube after Will uses it. "That's what it says on the box!"

"Yeah, but I like my mouth all foamy, remember?" Will asks.

"Like a rabid dog, sure. I remember." They're not even standing that close to each other, but Mike manages to elbow Will anyway. "Hey," he says.

Will hums in question. Both of their mouths are frothy now. Mike pauses his toothbrush mid-movement and meets Will's eyes in the mirror. "I missed you," he says thickly, through toothpaste, getting flecks on the counter as he speaks. He says it like it's simple. Candor has always come easily to him, something Will envies. 

Will just looks at him, eyes bright in the mirror's reflection. It's hard to pinpoint when his feelings for Mike first started evolving into something bigger and less definable, but it's small moments like this that keep them going. Mike elbows him again and then both of them struggle to hog the sink to spit and rinse. 

They get into bed and Mike tucks himself in tight, even though he's probably going to have to use the bathroom one last time in about twenty minutes. Funny what Will tends to remember from their childhood sleepovers. This whole trip finally starts to seem real -- that he's driving across the country, headed to college, with Mike rustling around five feet away. 

Mike. Mike, who is Will's -- something. He doesn't know if they even can call each other best friends anymore since they barely talk. Will still feels comfortable around him, so maybe? But also now, suddenly thrust back into seeing him every day after 4 years, Will's lost at sea, clutching at a map with half the markings missing. He has so many questions, too -- _do you still talk to El? _Or, _why did you want to do this trip with me? _Or, _did you think about me when I was gone? _

Instead, he says, "Good night," into the darkness and squeezes his eyes shut when Mike repeats it back.

* * *

They hang out downtown early the next day. Millennium Park is pretty crowded already with dozens of people milling around Cloud Gate. Mike ducks underneath the structure and takes a bunch of pictures of people's reflections, stretched out and shimmering in the morning sun. 

The humidity hasn't hit its summer peak yet, but The Art Institute is still blessedly cool when they step in. Will walks around at a slow pace, looking over Van Gogh, Picasso, Seurat. Paintings stretch on in room after room, artwork that he's only ever seen in textbooks. Another reminder that they're getting further from home every second.

He tries his best to take it all in, although a lot of the art goes over his head. Half of his mind is also preoccupied at tracking Mike's movements, seeing which pieces he lingers over and which ones he just gives his patented 'Confused Wheeler' look to. Their paths converge in front of _Nighthawks_, where Mike has been standing the longest with his hands clasped behind him like an old man. The museum brochure is sticking out of his back pocket; his hair is shorter than it used to be, revealing the pale skin on the back of his neck. Will wishes Jonathan were here to take a photo.

"I like this one," Mike states. 

"It's a pretty famous one," Will says. "I like it, too. It makes me feel sad and alone, but in a peaceful way." He chews his lip, feeling Mike studying him, but continues to stare at the painting instead. 

"It's probably one of those paintings where the meaning changes depending on the age of the person looking at it, right?" Mike says. 

Will finally looks at him, startled. Mike never had an interest in art, but Will's forgotten how astute he can be. Also, it's a Tuesday morning and they're discussing art. Everything about it seems very adult. "I mean -- yeah. Or it could change depending on your emotional state. But that can be said of most art."

"I don't think I'm gonna look at that painting of a ship when I'm 50 and depressed and suddenly decide it has a deeper meaning," Mike counters, pointing vaguely behind him. 

Will smiles. "You might, with your one kidney and all."

Mike grins back. "Hey, you think I should change my major to be an art critic?"

"Nah. You'd be too nice about everything. No critiques to be found."

"That's not true, I'm critical about everything," Mike says dismissively, and it _is_ true -- Will had just forgotten about that as well. "I only never have critiques for your stuff."

"Maybe you're just too nice to _me_, then." 

"Yeah, probably," Mike agrees easily. 

He lopes off toward the next painting and the illusion of being adults leaves with him. The reality is that Will is just a kid, standing in front of a painting, wondering how to talk to his best friend.


	2. Denver

Their next big stop isn't until Denver, almost fifteen hours away. Mike volunteers to drive all day probably just to see if he can. They pull over into a gas station right outside of Cook County, one with sun-bleached orange roofs and lines of 18-wheelers parked diagonally over the cracked asphalt. Behind them is flat land all the way through, narrowing into a single point on the horizon. 

Mike goes into the convenience store and comes back out with a bag full of snacks and weird energy zap drinks that are only ever available in places like these. "I wanna see how long I can go," he says. "You think I can do all fifteen hours?"

Will presses his lips together. He digs into his pocket and reveals a wrinkled plastic baggie with unmarked pills that look like vitamins. "Maybe with these. I found them at our last gas stop. Not sure if they're for energy or for, you know, male virility or something."

Mike brightens. "Science experiment?" he suggests, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Only because you're the subject," Will laughs. "If you start seeing weird stuff, we gotta stop, though."

"Or like, if my dick starts becoming sentient, sure," Mike dismisses him with a quick wave of his hand, and Will feels an overwhelming sense of familiarity. This is a comfortable place for him, riding shotgun to Mike, literally and also figuratively as an observer to whatever ideas pop into his head. Will hands Mike the baggie and watches as he pops one pill and guzzles a drink, too, and then they're on the road again. 

It takes a few miles before he can settle into the journey as a long haul. Colorado seems impossibly far away, especially as he stares out the window at the sky and bland beige of dead vegetation. The monotonous color palette is making him sleepy already. He tries to imagine snow capped mountain ranges instead, but the image doesn't take. 

"Let's play a road trip game," Mike suggests, startling Will out of his thoughts. 

He doesn't even know any road trip games, but still asks, "Which one?"

"I don't know, I thought you'd know some. Me and Nancy mostly spent our family road trips hitting each other."

"Well, I don't know any either. All I remember from our road trips was mom and dad fighting and Jonathan being really nice to try to distract me from how mom and dad were fighting." 

Mike makes an annoyed noise. "Fucking Lonnie."

"Fucking Lonnie," Will agrees. "Hey, but isn't there that one game where you have to yell out any out-of-state license plates you see or else you get punched?"

"Uh, we've only been passing like, one car every five minutes," Mike points out. "That would be super boring. Also: Indiana." 

"You can't name your _own_ car -- " Will starts, then Mike's fist shoots out toward him but Will dodges it in time, cramming himself up against the door. The car swerves a bit and he yelps with glee, and there are dull thumping noises from the trunk as all their earthly belongings slide around. Mike either doesn't notice or doesn't care; he veers back and forth on purpose a few more times while cackling. 

"I think the pills are kicking in," Mike announces, finally straightening the car out. "Or maybe the drink. Maybe both. I don't know."

"You don't say," Will giggles. In contrast, he's getting sleepier by the minute, as if there's a finite amount of energy between them and Mike is hogging it all. "I might fall asleep. Do you promise not to drive us into a ditch if I do?"

Mike shushes him, blindly reaching out and poking his fingers into Will's eyelid, across his cheek, along his ear. "Sleep time for the baby," he croons as Will bats him away half-heartedly.

Some part of Mike's response pings an old memory as Will is settling his head in between the headrest and the seatbelt hanger. For Halloween when they were ten years old, Mike donned a nightgown and an old bathrobe while Will was his crying "baby", legs hidden within the robe and his upper half exposed and swaddled. They carefully shuffled around in sync the whole night, with Will resting his head onto Mike's shoulder and wailing while everyone else yelled, "Trick or treat!"

"You guys are freakishly good at that," Lucas commented at one point. 

"Gotta take care of the baby," Mike said, encircling his arms around Will's waist as if carrying him. It was pretty cold that night, everyone else shivering and half-regretting the refusal to wear jackets because "it'll ruin the whole costume, Mom, jeez", but Will remembers feeling warm and safe. 

He still has a photo of them all in costume, in the single album buried at the bottom of all the clothes and mixtapes and electronics in the trunk. It's not neatly labeled or spanning as much time as the ones left behind at his mom's place, but most of the important stuff is in it: Dustin and Lucas, of course, and Max and El appearing about three-quarters of the way through. Mike is on almost every page, peeking out between old movie stubs and loose binder paper sketches; photos, letters, and even a clipping of a horribly drawn comic he'd given Will once, and -- if he thinks about it, all of it, the conclusion seems inevitable. How could he not end up in love with Mike, after all that?

* * *

Gas station snacks keep them going until mid-afternoon, right after they cross into Nebraska, by which time Mike is going a little crazy with the steering wheel drumming and Will is getting sweaty from low blood sugar. In the middle of nowhere, they eat lunch at a rectangular block of a diner that's plopped onto the dust canvas, outlined in classic chrome with a blinking neon-pink light. The rural Midwest version of _Nighthawks_. Mike orders for both of them like he always used to -- "a cheeseburger and, uh, a BLT, right Will?" -- and a quiet sort of happiness spreads through him. 

By the time they step back outside, the sun has slung over deep into the west. Mike, either newly energized by food or stubborn about keeping his word, heads right back to the driver's seat with a determined sort of energy to reenter the purgatory that is Highway 80. As the road keeps unraveling further and further, Will pictures it as an optical illusion -- that it's the earth that's moving, that in fact the car is staying in the same spot the entire time and they're actually still back in Indiana as someone cranks the scrolling backdrop like in those old-timey movies. The thought fills him with dread, but he doesn't try to stop. Stoking his own anxiety has always had a grim sort of thrill to it that he can't quite put into words.

Mike sings along with one of his mixtapes, something British and jangly, and pretty soon the sky starts saturating with twilight like a sunburned apricot, a reassuring reminder that time is indeed passing. Will rolls the window down and lets his fingers flutter against the wind, listening to Mike's off-tune voice overlaying the shitty stereo, everything washed warm in the golden-red sunset. The route continues to dip and curve up ahead ceaselessly, but it's much more palatable on the other side of daylight.

"Hey," Will says, perking up when something catches his eye behind the copse lining the highway. "Check it out." 

It's a carnival, a small dinky one, but the parking lot is packed tight. Clearly it has no trouble drawing people in. Maybe they're also attracted to the lights, the rows and rows of Edison bulbs everywhere, flashing in different patterns like a beacon. Or maybe it's only that they're sick of sitting in a car for hours on end. Either way, it's crowded enough that Mike has to take care not to bump his knobby elbows against passersby. Up close, the brightly painted reds and blues of the rides are spackled brown with rust and the few games are probably rigged to all hell, but it hardly matters. There's fresh air and tinny ice cream truck music and the novelty of being out at night without feeling guilty about how someone's at home worrying. Mike finds a fried Oreo stand almost immediately and they huddle in a corner to split a bag that soaks through with oil, dusting everything in their radius with powdered sugar. 

They only have enough tickets for a couple rides and the one that least looks like it's going to catapult them into the air by accident is, ironically, the Rotor, which has no safety straps at all. "I trust science more than any of this other stuff," Mike says, positioning himself against the wall. "There are equations for why this works. Hard data."

"Sure. But I'm more worried about how maybe those Oreos weren't the best idea," Will says as the platform slowly starts to rumble into motion. 

"Okay, I literally was not even worried until you just said that." 

Will grins at him, yells, "Too late now!" over the grinding of machinery. 

The ride starts to pick up speed with every second. Will closes his eyes, trying to breathe against the pressure in his chest and the BLT that threatens to make itself known again, but beyond the nausea there's a pleasurable adrenaline rush building up. Pretty soon the centripetal force is all he knows, as it flattens his body against the wall and makes him acutely aware of every single organ and square inch of skin. He wonders how close the sensation is to teleportation or light speed, or falling into a black hole. Beside him, Mike is screaming and hollering in delight; Will joins in after a few seconds and somehow, despite the magic of physics pressing down all around them, their hands find each other and grip tight.

* * *

By the time they get back on the road, it's almost 10PM. All they have to show for their pitstop is a small phlegm-green knockoff Gremlin from the ring toss and too much questionable carnival food that sits dormant for a bit but starts showing signs of reanimation after about an hour.

"Maybe that was a bad idea," Mike groans, putting a hand over his stomach. "God, what did we even eat today? I had that energy drink in the morning -- "

" -- and then a cheeseburger and fries," Will supplies. "And fried Oreos and funnel cake. With soda and chips in between," he counts off with his fingers. "Oh, and you took those weird pills too."

Mike groans again. "Tell the coroners I did it all in the name of science."

Will laughs, ignoring the pressure in his throat that he wishes he could blame on heartburn. Weird pills, science experiments -- he knows what he's been wanting to ask for the whole day, or for the whole damn trip, and this might be the best segue he's going to get, but even now he can't figure out how to smoothly change subjects. Conversation timing in general never got easier; as a kid he would be bursting inside with something to say but couldn't find when to interject it, kind of like the girls at recess who took forever to jump into double dutch. Oftentimes he ended up saying nothing at all. 

Finally, he asks, "Hey. Uh. Do you still talk to El?" 

The car keeps heading down the highway at a steady speed as Will breathes against the window. Fog expands and ebbs on the glass twice before Mike replies, "Yeah, sure. Sometimes."

Even though it's clear that's as much of an answer he's going to get, Will turns and angles his body toward the driver's seat to make sure. Mike is gazing at the road, one elbow propped up next to the door lock and his other hand in the 5 o'clock position on the wheel, wedged against his knee. He looks tired and ghostly, illuminated in flashes by the oncoming headlights. 

The last time they had discussed this was right after the breakup happened, over the phone at two in the morning. Will had dragged the phone into the closet, was poking his finger through as many of the cord coils as possible. Mike hadn't said much that night, and what he did say was not fully decipherable to Will and reminded him of the time he accidentally walked into Spanish 4 instead of Spanish 2. He was able to parse out basic words and context, but everything else was beyond understanding. 

"How do you talk to someone about your homework assignment on _Grapes of Wrath_ after you've seen her almost die like a million times?" Mike had asked, and Will hadn't known what to say.

"That's it?" Will asks now. "Just -- sometimes?"

Mike shrugs. The deliberate casualness of it sets off a flicker of anger, a match meeting gasoline. It's sharp and cuts cleanly through the lingering buoyancy from the carnival. 

"I mean, yeah. I don't know what you want me to say." 

Will turns back to the window and rolls his eyes so that Mike can't see. "I don't want you to say anything if you don't want to. I'm only asking because she never talked about it much."

Mike glances at him then. It's difficult to tell if he's surprised or hurt or nothing at all. "Okay, well. I don't know, dude. It's just kinda hard to be friends with your first girlfriend. There's really not much else to it."

"Okay," Will says. He doesn't know if he means for it to sound petty. "We don't have to talk about it."

"It's fine," Mike replies, and Will is definitely being petty now because he bristles at that as well. Of course it's fine, they're friends. They shouldn't have to voice that it's fine. 

Will fiddles with the door lock. Mike drives on, oblivious.

* * *

He often thinks about the summer of Starcourt Mall, their third and final impending apocalypse, and that night in the Wheelers' basement with one of the few arguments they didn't get to finish having. But Mike and Lucas had been right back then -- he could feel them moving on without him, board games forgotten in favor of crushes and girlfriends. It was seemingly happening to everyone but him.

That feeling of being left behind had never really changed for Will. He's 100% sure he'd still be the weird, naive, inexperienced kid when it came to relationships, demogorgon or not. It's a good excuse, though, and one that all of his government-sponsored therapists believed. _Afraid to engage with people...likely due to lasting trauma_, they wrote. Half of that was true, at least.

But there was one boy Will met when he was a junior: Eddie Takekuma, a senior and one of two Asian kids in the entire school. They first crossed paths during fall semester, right before Halloween, when Will was cutting through the back of the school to get to the video store before it closed. He almost tripped over Eddie's blood-stained Reeboks, which were sticking out between the weeds like a modern day _Wizard of Oz_. 

His first impression of Eddie was that he had sad eyes. Will could relate to that. 

At least Will didn't merit a second glance, blending in with the rest of the small nerds. Eddie was an active target -- as a nonlocal, as a minority, "fucking everything about me" -- and spent the better part of the year icing one body part or another. Eddie was from California. He had dark hair and smooth, unblemished skin that stood out in a sea of pimple-faced high schoolers. He liked Joy Division and had been to Japan once before. He told Will about what the Grand Canyon was like, and the first concert he went to, and they often sat and watched music videos he'd recorded onto a VHS tape. 

"Have you traveled?" he once asked Will, and Will couldn't come up with an answer. It was funny to think about. _How do I explain that I've been to another dimension but also have never traveled outside of Indiana?_, he wrote to Mike later. He only ever mentioned Eddie in passing, maybe twice, and Mike didn't ask further. 

The day of their first kiss, Eddie's lip was still swollen from a scuffle two days prior, chin still a little bruised. Will tried to be careful with where he put his hands but quickly forgot about that the more they kissed. He touched everything he could -- Eddie's denim-clad knee, his hair, the back of his neck, his shirt-sleeve. Eddie was almost a statue in comparison. 

When they pulled apart, Will was breathing heavily and had Eddie's sleeve scrunched up in his fist. They stared at each other. "I guess I know now," Will said quietly. "About myself."

"I guess so," Eddie said. He smiled and touched Will's cheek. It was almost too tender. Will struggled against the sudden urge to cry. 

The acceptance letter from UCLA that March was Eddie's gift, the treasure unlocked for enduring the hellscape of his senior year. "Get out of here, Will," Eddie said the last time they saw each other. "You don't belong in this place, they'll suck the life out of you."

If only Eddie knew how close he was to the literal truth. Will sniffed and said, "You had good reason to hate it here."

"I just want to make sure you know that this isn't your only option. And I didn't hate everything." Eddie touched Will's cheek again and Will actually did cry that time. Then he left, moving on, and Will was alone again.


End file.
